China now tops U.S. in space launches: For the first time ever, China has launched more rockets into orbit in a year than the U.S. In 2011, the Chinese sent 19 rockets into space. The U.S. sent just 18. Russia, the Walmart of space launches, fired off no fewer than 31 rockets. (Danger Room)

A skeptic goes on a ghost hunt: For me, this was not just a lesson in how “the other side” conducts its business, but a glimpse into the world of a believer, which is easy to forget although I once was one. (skepchick)

Curiosity ingests its first soil sample: The sample is a sieved portion — about as much material as in a baby aspirin — from the third scoop collected by Curiosity as a windblown patch of dusty sand called “Rocknest.” (NASA)

Cygnus debut pushed to March or April: Orbital Sciences Corp. said its new Antares rocket will not launch its Cygnus cargo freighter on a demonstration flight to the international space station until around March or April. (Space News)

10 Responses

Russia and China are shooting off rockets and we are looking for life on Mars. I just hope our satellite network of defense weapons are watching and ready to pounce on any nation that fires off a rocket that looks dangerous to the US.

Americans’ belief in the reality of global warming has increased: It’s up 13 percentage points over the past two and a half years, from 57 percent in January 2010 to 70 percent in September 2012. (Yale)

Yale is hiding the actual lede: if you look at page 18, the percentage who think global warming “Caused mostly by human activities” is steady within the margin of error.

There’s some criticism of the study as introducing bias with their style of questions, but (if I’m reading the paper correctly) Yale’s been using the same questions in every survey, so the trends might be real (even if the numbers aren’t).

That said, there seems to be something goofy in this sample (see page 29). They only found 10 seniors who answered, and yet they’re weighted to be 15% of their results. Their weightings for household income also seem to be skewed towards the more affluent.

And taking that statement on faith, they went off and took their baths.

Man-made global warming is a lot like that.
The kid go off and takes his bath on faith,
not knowing that his butt may not actually have
a noticeable stink at that moment,
not knowing that everybody’s butt stinks,
and not realizing that eventually his butt will stink again.

It is our lack of knowledge that puts us at a disadvantage
with mothers and Yale’s
Project on Climate Change Communication
and the report Climate Change in the American Mind, which is mostly an opinion poll, not, not, not, not, not actual climate data.